Their goal is life, and to pass it on

Three friends, all transplant recipients, want others to consider organ donationBy BILL SPURR Features Writer, Halifax Chronicle HeraldBlair Landry had just returned to Halifax from the Vancouver Winter Olympics, where he was a hockey official, when things really got interesting."I got back in March of last year and around April, I started feeling tired," Landry said. "I would say the main symptom was feeling tired, and also just feeling jittery. My legs didn’t feel that strong. I’d come home from work and take a nap at six at night. I wouldn’t even eat supper."I’d just go have a nap for two hours and have supper at eight. I just figured ‘Well, I’m going to be 42 this summer — I’m old.’ "But when he started having trouble climbing stairs, and constantly had the taste of metal in his mouth, he went to his family doctor, who prescribed blood work."He called me on a Wednesday, and said, ‘Your blood work came in, get it redone today.’ I said, ‘I’m in Middleton. I’ll do it tomorrow,’ and he said, ‘No. Today.’ "So Landry drove back to the city, had more blood taken."That night, a kidney specialist called and said ‘You have less than five per cent kidney function. Meet me at the hospital in one hour.’ "Landry and his wife, Deanna, briefly discussed what to tell their three children and then he packed a bag and was admitted that night."They took my blood pressure and it was through the roof, because the kidneys regulate blood pressure, and it was 220 over 140, resting, laying in a hospital bed," he remembered."They said, ‘You’ll have a biopsy in the morning so we can figure out what this is,’ then they turned the lights out and I laid there thinking a lot of things, when you hear ‘biopsy.’ It wasn’t that, obviously. They did a biopsy and they found out I had an autoimmune disease, where your own body is attacking the kidneys. They said I might have had it 10, 15, 20 years. They don’t know how you get it, and they don’t know how to fix it."Landry started getting dialysis treatment that week, and being grateful for the fact he has three brothers."A brother has a two-in-four chance of being a half-match, one-in-four of being no match whatsoever, and one-in-four of being perfect," he said."Before I found out I needed a transplant, my younger brother in Montreal emailed me and said, ‘If you need a transplant, here’s my blood type. I went to the doctor and here’s all my blood work results.’ "Landry’s brother, Craig, turned out to be a match, and after a few months to match tissue and do other preliminary work, the transplant took place in November.Landry had been told he would be in hospital for two weeks and off work for three months, but he beat both timelines by a wide margin. Now, life is mostly back to normal."I can’t play contact sports, and I can’t eat grapefruit (because it might disrupt medications), and I’m fine with that sacrifice."Craig wouldn’t warranty the kidney, and the doctor wouldn’t warranty the service," Landry joked. "But, as someone pointed out, I didn’t pay for it."In a bizarre coincidence, Landry’s transplant made him the third guy on his gentlemen’s hockey team to be, as he puts it, "running on spare parts."His longtime friend, Trevor Umlah, underwent a double lung transplant in 2007, and Chris Meagher had a kidney transplant in 2009 after being diagnosed with the same disease that Landry has."On the Internet, it says the odds are one-in-5,000," said Landry. "So what are the odds of two friends from Fairview having it?"Umlah and Landry are both 42. Meagher is 39. The three, along with two women who donated their teenagers’ organs when they died prematurely, have formed a society called Life: Pass it On. The society is hosting the Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness hockey game and family skate ( www.lifepassiton.ca) at the Halifax Forum on April 17. The goal is to get families to discuss organ donation before someone dies."We all feel super fortunate to have the quality of life that we have today. So we sort of sat around and tried to figure out what we could do to help others get the same benefit," said Landry, who vividly recalls his time in the hospital."When I walked out of my last day of dialysis, the dialysis unit in Halifax was full. It’s standing-room only in there. Not all those people are candidates for transplant, but a lot of them are."People don’t really seem to talk about (organ donation) until it’s too late, and the ultimate decision is left to the family to make, maybe not knowing the wishes of the person who died."